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《Google unveils Chrome OS》
Google Inc. painted a bright picture of the personal computing future on Thursday: an always-connected netbook that boots up in 7 seconds, never has to install software, stores all data online and efficiently fends off attack.
These are among the many promised benefits of an operating system the search giant is developing that overhauls computing by making the Web browser the center of everything.
The company demonstrated Google Chrome OS, based on the browser of the same name, during a news conference at its Mountain View offices.
It's already talking with major hardware manufacturers to bring netbooks - light, small and inexpensive laptops - running on the system to market in time for the holiday season of 2010.
Simple as TV
The grand vision is to deliver a computer as fast, simple and safe as a television, eliminating all-too-familiar hassles like software upgrades, application conflicts, lengthy reboots, lost data and malicious viruses.
"The model of computing we're trying to advance is pretty fundamentally different," said Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management at Google.
This model is hardly a direct threat to Microsoft Corp.'s dominant Windows operating system or Apple Inc.'s popular line of sleek, high-end personal computers, said Ray Valdes, analyst with Gartner Research.
But if it proves successful, it could raise expectations for the performance of both computing software and hardware.
"They're taking a second look at the netbook category and really emphasizing the Web-centric aspect of it," he said.
Because netbooks don't provide all the tools or processing power of larger and more expensive computers, they're generally considered a complement to a desktop or laptop.
But the industry is increasingly shifting toward cloud computing, where applications like Gmail or Google Docs run on remote servers, store data online and update automatically.
Smaller devices
This trend, along with advances in Internet technology, is allowing more computing tasks to be accomplished over smaller and less powerful devices, be they netbooks or smart phones.
There's a dark side to the cloud, however.
Running applications and storing information online limits the work that can be accomplished when Internet access is interrupted, still a frustratingly regular occurrence for many broadband customers.
In addition, when the providers of online applications suffer technical snafus, so do their customers, as has been demonstrated several times when Google's Gmail service went down.
Not surprisingly, the operating system demonstrated on Thursday resembles the Chrome browser. Users can navigate to the online applications by clicking on tabs along the top of the screen or on an applications page.
The company also announced that the operating system is now open source, meaning third-party developers can test, contribute to and develop on top of it.
More scrutiny
Security is enhanced in Chrome OS because operating systems automatically give more scrutiny to online applications than installed software, said Matthew Papakipos, engineering director for Google Chrome OS.
In addition, each application is isolated from every other one as well as from the operating system, and all user data is encrypted, he said.
Google didn't say which manufacturers it is talking to or working with on the netbooks. Pichai declined to state a target price but said it will probably be in today's range, generally from about $300 to $500.
E-mail James Temple at jtemple@sfchronicle.com.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/ar ... =tech#ixzz0XVmP65Ua |
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